I Don’t Know How To Make Money

I mean, I know HOW to make money. I just don’t know… how to make money.

I don’t know how I want to make money.

I left my proper full-time job over the summer to focus on doing my own thing. I’ve always know I’d want to “do my own thing” eventually and that my work life wouldn’t look very… traditional.

I’ve always known I want to be self-employed. Whether that’s as a freelancer or as an artist or as a business owner… I’ve never dreamed of a corner office or a job title. The idea of someone else telling me how much money I can make or when I can take a break is, well, No.

Anyways, a couple things came together personally and professionally over the summer making it feel like the right time to go out on my own. I figured I’d start with freelance work and see where that led.

Since then I’ve had a lot of ideas about how I could make money and even more about how I’d like to spend my time.

The problem seems to be in finding the overlap between the two. The whole money versus passion dilemma. Many of the things I know I could make money doing as a freelancer aren’t things I’m particularly excited about. They wouldn’t pass my test.

And the projects that excite me I don’t see a reliable way to monetize, or a way to do so without squashing my creativity. Or it seems super risky. (Or I’m just scared of what people will think of me…?)

I’ve paralyzed myself with choice.

(And entitlement, clearly.)

Because isn’t the whole point of working for yourself that you get to do work you actually enjoy? Isn’t it a “waste of your unique gift and time here on earth” to do anything other than what aligns with your values? Or do you take work you might not enjoy but know you can make decent money at so you have the time to pursue the other stuff without pressure to monetize it? And if you’re going to go that route shouldn’t you set up some kind of passive income from a product rather than rely on “time intensive freelance work that doesn’t scale”?

Taken at Spoonbill & Sugartown Books in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, because I love me a good worn floor. A reminder that no matter how special you think you and your problems are, someone’s been here before you.